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Share Turkey has said in a statement that it is concerned over recent incidents in Uyghuristan region that has left several dead, calling to bring criminals before justice. The Friday’s statement came days after a trio of recent attacks blamed on militants among Uyghuristan’s native Turkic Muslim Uighur population opposed to heavy-handed Chinese rule.

At least three dozen people, including the alleged attackers, were killed in the attacks in the cities of Hotan and Kashgar, which came just ahead of the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Uighurs are culturally, linguistically and religiously distinct from China’s Han ethnic majority, and share many links with ethnic Turks in Central Asia and Anatolia.

The Foreign Ministry statement said Turkey attaches importance to security, stability and peace of people in Uyghuristan, whom the statement said Turkey considers as “friendship bridge” with China. The latest major anti-Chinese riot in Urumqi was two years ago in which at least 197 people were killed, hundreds arrested, and scores left missing.

The unrest also caused relations between Turkey and China to get worsened after Turkey’s leadership strongly criticized China.

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Analysts say authorities are trying to send a message to Uyghur People.

An undated poster shows Memeteli Tiliwaldi and Turson Hasan, who were shot dead by police on Aug. 1, 2011.

Authorities shot dead two Uyghurs allegedly behind weekend violence in Xinjiang in a bid to explicitly warn members of the ethnic minority group questioning Chinese rule in the northwestern region, analysts said.

The government in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region posted a notice on its website Tuesday that police killed suspects Memtieli Tiliwaldi, 29, and Tursun Hesen, 34, on Monday as they fled and hid in a cornfield on the outskirts of the city of Kashgar, where the violence took place.

They were among seven Uyghurs killed by police who had accused them of staging bloody attacks near a shopping center and food market in Kashgar that left nine people dead in among the worst violence this year in the volatile region.

Despite having the opportunity to capture the two men alive, Chinese authorities opted to kill them on the spot to reinforce a message to Uyghurs in the region that resistance to Chinese rule would not be tolerated, analysts said.

Ilyar Shemseddin, a Uyghur analyst based in Virginia outside Washington, said members of the Han Chinese majority do not view Uyghurs as Chinese citizens and, instead, treat them like “foreign forces.”

“The attackers were armed with just knives, while the State forces were armed with an assortment of weapons and armor. It was fully possible to capture them without killing them,” Shemseddin, a former vice president of the U.S.-based Uyghur American Association, said.

“If China really accepted these Uyghurs as Chinese citizens, they should have captured them without firing their weapons and charged them through the judiciary process,” he said.

‘No leniency’
The violence came two weeks after a group of Uyghurs raided a police station in nearby Hotan city that resulted in the deaths of 20 people.
Shemseddin said the Uyghurs believed behind the Hotan attacks were also shot on the spot in a demonstration of excessive force.
Chinese intellectual Zheng Xianli had also criticized the police solution to the Hotan incident in an article published on the Chinese website Boxun.com.

“There were no powerful weapons in their hands. The police could have conquered the attackers without killing them,” Zheng said.

“If the attackers were captured and put through the judicial system, it could have proved more helpful to the state in identifying the reason behind the attack,” he said, adding that the 90 minutes used to end the standoff was “too short.”
Following the Kashgar violence, authorities had issued a reward of 100,000 yuan (U.S. $15,500) for the two men who were believed to have fled the scene of Sunday’s attack on a restaurant in the city that left the owner and waiter dead and destroyed the building in a fire.

Chinese officials quickly blamed the Kashgar attack on Uyghur Islamic militants campaigning for an independent homeland, and said the ringleaders received training in making firearms and explosives at camps run by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in Pakistan before returning to China.

On Thursday, China’s top police official, Security Minister Meng Jianzhu, warned that “criminals who dare to test the law and commit violent terrorist acts will be shown no leniency, no appeasement and no soft heart.”

Second-class citizens
Another Uyghur political analyst living in Virginia, Ilshat Hasan, said the police killing of the two suspects showed that the authorities treated Uyghurs as “second-class citizens.”
“China always claims that the ethnic problem is an internal issue and they warn other states and organizations not to intervene … every time [Beijing] encounters such incidents they deal with [the perpetrators] as members of an insurgent army, not as their own citizens,” Hasan said.
“If they truly saw them as their own citizens, they would likely be more patient, try to listen to what they want, and charge them by law.”
Hassan said authorities want to send a message to the Uyghur community that they will not negotiate on issues of rights and that they should obey Chinese rule without question.
This uncompromising stand has driven Uygurs to desperate retaliatory attacks, he said.
“That is why the attacks occur continuously, even when [the Uyghurs] know clearly that they cannot overcome police with the knives they carry.”
The analysts cited previous incidents around the Xinjiang region in which excessive force was also used.
In 2009, one week after ethnic violence left some 200 people dead in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, three Uyghur men attacked a police squad on the streets of Dongkowruk. Police shot and killed all three.
In August 2008, Chinese armed police shot and killed six Uyghurs, including one woman, suspected of having carried out an attack in Yamanyar, while they hid in a cornfield outside of Kashgar.

Show of strength
Alimjan Inayet, a Uyghur professor at Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, said in each of these cases, the suspects could have been allowed to surrender.
“By such hostile actions, China wants to show Uyghurs the strength of the government in full view of many people. This is not an indication of power. On the contrary, it shows the weakness of the state,” he said.

Inayet said there had been no official investigations into the use of excessive force by security forces on Uyghurs.

“Of course you cannot expect an investigation into the use of excessive force from a police force whose leader has called the situation in Xinjiang a ‘life and death struggle for the citizens,’” Inayet said, quoting a speech by former Xinjiang party chief Wang Lequan.
Exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kader compared the police action against the Uyghurs in the Kashgar cornfield to the July 22 bombing and shooting massacre in Norway that left 77 people dead and in which the perpetrator was captured alive.
“At the tragic incident in Norway, police did not kill the suspect. It was completely possible: he had weapons and he had killed a lot of people,” she said.

“If you look at the two Uyghur suspects—what they were armed with and what they did—and compare what happened to the incident in Norway, this shows that China has a lot of ground to cover before it can become a state of law.”

Kashgar and Hotan, historic centres of Uighur and Islamic culture in the south of China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, have been the scene of recent bloodshed.

The reasons behind the violence in these two cities, which lie 520km (323 miles) apart on the southern fringes of the Taklamakan Desert, are confused and disputed but some of the essential facts are clear.

On 18 July a group of Uighurs armed with knives and explosive devices attacked a police station in Hotan and took hostages. During a rescue operation, at least one police officer, two of the hostages and some of the attackers were killed.

Among the grievances of these Uighurs were: the detention of many young male family members without trial after the anniversary of the July 2009 Urumqi riots; attempts to ban women from wearing black headscarves and robes; and the confiscation of their farmland for redevelopment. Some sources have reported that 20 people died in this incident.

In Kashgar the violence broke out on 30 July, just before the Ramadan fast. There were two explosions and a hijacked car was driven into pedestrians on a crowded street where Han Chinese workers regularly gather at food stalls: six or seven people died and almost 30 were injured.

On the afternoon of 31 July a restaurant in Kashgar was set on fire and the owner and a waiter were killed. Although no specific grievances have been mentioned in connection with these attacks, the citizens of Kashgar have been outraged at the demolition of the traditional Uighur houses in the centre of the old city.

The official reason for the demolitions was that the houses were unhygienic and potentially dangerous in an earthquakes, but Uighurs believe that it is simply a stratagem to break up their communities and reduce their influence in the city.

People continue to live and work among the ruins: heavily armed police patrol regularly, and very visibly, on foot and in armoured vehicles. The atmosphere is tense.

‘Strike hard campaign’

Behind the current conflict lies a long struggle for self-determination by the Uighur people. Although Xinjiang is in the far north-west of China, it is also culturally part of Central Asia and the Uighurs, who are the largest single ethnic group in Xinjiang, are Turkic-speaking Muslims.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Muslim Central Asian states gained their independence, the dormant Eastern Turkestan independence movement in Xinjiang was stirred into a revival.

Many Uighurs complain that mainly the Han Chinese are taking their jobs

During China’s economic boom, Xinjiang has received considerable state investment in industrial and energy projects that have in theory benefited the whole region. However, there has also been large-scale migration of mainly Han Chinese workers from the east: many Uighurs complain that the Han are taking their jobs.

The shocking but not unexpected outbreak of violence in July was not the first in Xinjiang, and it is unlikely to be the last.

In July 2009, riots in Urumqi, the administrative capital of Xinjiang, cost the lives of at least 200 people and drew the attention of the world’s media to an ethnic and political conflict that has been neglected for decades.

In 1995 there were serious disturbances in the north-western city of Ghulja, which had been the headquarters of an independent Eastern Turkestan Republic in the 1940s. A rigorous crackdown by the local government and military developed into a permanent “Strike Hard” campaign, and this provoked a further outbreak of demonstrations in February 1997 which were vigorously suppressed.

Thousands of Uighurs were detained; some were convicted and imprisoned; others charged with separatist activity were executed. Religious activities, which have become less restricted in the rest of China, were curtailed in Xinjiang; children under the age of 18 and Communist Party and government officials were forbidden even to enter a mosque for prayers.

The real culprits

The official response has been to characterise these outbreaks of violence simply as “terrorist” acts and to blame outside forces, including Uighur groups based in the United States and in Europe. Overseas groups actively promote the idea of an independent Eastern Turkestan, but there is no evidence linking them directly with violence inside Xinjiang.

More recently Beijing has pointed to international terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda, as possible culprits: but again no concrete evidence has been produced. In 2003 the death was announced of Hasan Mesum, who had been shot in South Waziristan on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and he was identified as the leader of the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

In the wake of the recent attacks in Hotan and Kashgar, the Chinese authorities have revived concerns about terrorists trained by ETIM in Pakistan although most specialists do not even believe that ETIM exists as a real organisation.

The dire situation of the Uighurs in Xinjiang is at the root of the conflict. Only when the real culprits – poverty, marginalisation and discrimination – are defeated can the conflict be satisfactorily resolved.

Michael Dillon is the author of Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Far Northwest and the forthcoming Xinjiang and the Expansion of Chinese Communist Power: Kashghar in the Twentieth Century

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For immediate release

August 1, 2011, 2:45 pm EST

Contact: Uyghur American Association +1 (202) 478 1920

Attacks that occurred over the weekend in Kashgar, together with recent unrest in the city of Hotan, have punctuated an atmosphere of fear, repression and conflict that has permeated East Turkestan in recent months. According to media reports, the attacks took place in the southern city of Kashgar on July 30 and 31, resulting in the deaths and injuries of a number of people. Details of the attacks remain unclear, and no independent sources have confirmed the details of the incidents. The Uyghur American Association (UAA) is concerned that Uyghurs detained in connection with events in Kashgar will be subjected to torture and a lack of due process, and cautions that Uyghurs will likely be vulnerable to arbitrary detention as a massive security presence envelops the city.

UAA unequivocally opposes any form of violence. Violent incidents in East Turkestan will only serve to heighten ethnic tensions and increase the suppression of the Uyghur people. UAA mourns the loss of all victims in the attacks in Kashgar.

UAA also urges the international community to afford the utmost skepticism to Chinese government claims associating terrorism with the reported attacks in Kashgar. Chinese authorities consistently issue accounts of events involving Uyghurs in East Turkestan that are not substantiated by compelling evidence. The Chinese government follows a pattern of issuing such accounts accompanied by accusations of terrorism and charges that outside forces were to blame for orchestrating violence. It also has a record of failing to allow journalists to freely report on such incidents.

The attacks that took place in Kashgar on July 30 and 31 took place against a backdrop of heavy-handed repression of Uyghurs carried out by the Chinese government.

“Chinese officials have sown the seeds of instability in East Turkestan through the repressive measures they have enforced since the unrest of July 5, 2009”, said Uyghur American Association president Alim Seytoff. “The killings and detentions of Uyghurs carried out by Chinese security forces, and the relentless atmosphere of fear and hopelessness that has existed throughout East Turkestan since July 2009, have pushed many Uyghurs to extreme desperation. This situation serves no one in the region, be they Uyghur or Han Chinese. The Chinese government must take responsibility for creating this climate of fear, and must take steps to end its brutality against Uyghurs in order to create peace in the region.”

The Chinese government issued a “White Paper on Development and Progress in Xinjiang” in 2009, declaring that ethnic harmony in East Turkestan has made great strides, and the only factor inhibiting social harmony and economic prosperity in the region is that of “East Turkestan terrorist forces” supported by “hostile foreign forces”. The document represents Chinese officials’ failure to investigate flaws in official policies, including a reliance on brute force to maintain “stability”. Incidences of unrest, often referred to as “mass incidents” by Chinese officials, have been on the increase throughout China in recent years, but outside of East Turkestan, these events are rarely labeled as terrorist acts.

Recent unrest in Hotan

Chinese officials provided unsubstantiated accounts regarding deadly unrest that took place in the city of Hotan on July 18. Until such time as officials in Hotan allow independent journalists and international observers to freely investigate the accounts of local residents, UAA urges the international community to view Chinese accounts of the Hotan unrest with caution. As with those Uyghurs detained in connection with events in Kashgar, UAA is concerned about the detention of Uyghurs in the wake of the unrest in Hotan. UAA urges the international community to demand a full, independent investigation into the unrest and the deaths reported to have occurred in Hotan and Kashgar.

Accounts provided by Uyghur residents of Hotan to the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) regarding July 18 events detail deadly force used by Chinese security forces against Uyghurs, and describe a peaceful demonstration that took place in a local bazaar. Uyghurs in Hotan told WUC that local Uyghurs had gathered on July 18 to protest a security clampdown in the city, arbitrary detentions and the confiscation of land. Uyghurs have also told WUC that more than 70 people have been arrested in connection with events in Hotan, and roadblocks have been implemented on all roads leading to the city.

Chinese state media has said that the incident in Hotan on July 18 was a terrorist attack orchestrated by “religious extremists”. However, as stated above, Chinese officials have frequently issued allegations of terrorist involvement in events involving Uyghurs, with little documentation and without allowing independent scrutiny of such claims.

A similar lack of transparency was exhibited by Chinese officials regarding attacks that reportedly took place between August and November 2010 in the cities of Aksu, Hotan and Kumul. In addition, while Chinese state media reported in February 2011 that the reported attacks were terrorist in nature, reports they issued in the wake of the fall 2010 attacks did not include any mention of terrorism, and only mentioned one attack that had reportedly taken place in Aksu. A lack of details and corroborating evidence necessitates skepticism regarding China’s claims about the reported attacks.

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China says Islamic radicals were behind violence in Kashgar

The city of Kashgar is home to many Uighurs, a Turkic minority. Authorities say one of the attackers had ties to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group opposed to Chinese rule in west China.

An armed member of the Chinese Special Police Corps stands guard near the site of Sunday’s attack in Kashgar, located in China’s far-western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (AP Photo/Kyodo News / August 1, 2011)

Chinese authorities said Monday that Islamic radicals trained in Pakistan to wage “holy war” were responsible for attacks over the weekend in the western city of Kashgar that left at least 19 dead.

The violence in Kashgar — along with a similar incident last month in the nearby city of Hotan in which 20 people were killed — are the most serious in the region since 2009. Kashgar was under a strict curfew Monday, with most schools and many businesses closed.

Kashgar’s local government said on its website Monday that one of the attackers had confessed to receiving training in explosives and firearms at a camp in Pakistan run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group opposed to Chinese rule in western China.

Uighurs, a Turkic minority that once dominated northwestern China, call the region East Turkestan. Many resent an influx of ethnic Han migrants from elsewhere in China, who they say have received the best pickings of jobs and housing.

“The suspects harbored thoughts of religious extremism. The outbreak of violence was absolutely no random occurrence,” the Kashgar municipality said in Monday’s statement. “They wanted to disturb social stability, incite ethnic hatred and create conflicts between ethnic groups in order to split Xinjiang from the motherland,” it said.

It was not possible to independently confirm Chinese accounts.

Officials said the attack Saturday night involved the hijacking of a van stopped at a red light that was then used to plow into a crowd. On Sunday, attackers created a decoy at a restaurant with homemade explosives and then used knives to attack police and firefighters who rushed to the scene, according to authorities.

Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based professor, said the violence could have been conducted or influenced by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

“These attacks in Kashgar might have been inspired by its ideology, or they might have received some technical training” from the movement, said Gunaratna, one of the few experts on the group.

He added, though, that the movement had been weakened by the killing of its leader, Hasan Mahsum, in a counter-terrorism operation conducted by the Pakistani army in 2003. “Keep in mind that the [East Turkestan Islamic Movement] today is a very weak organization with under two dozen members who travel back and forth between China and Pakistan,” he said.

Kashgar, which lies about 180 miles from the Pakistani border, has been designated a special economic zone by the Chinese government in the hope it can be turned into a manufacturing and trade hub along the lines of Shenzhen.

“Police are everywhere in the city. We do feel scared, but less so because of the police presence,” Liu Liming, 32, a hotel clerk who migrated to Kashgar from Hunan province, said Monday in a phone interview. “There have been some cancellations of bookings at our hotel because of the attacks. This month is usually a popular season for tourists.”

Chinese authorities virtually closed down the city Monday. Most photographs and witness accounts were immediately deleted from Twitter-like microblogs.

“All the shops are closed. There’re no street vendors either. Please, everyone pay attention to Kashgar! I don’t want my hometown’s momentum of growth to be put out like this before it gets a chance to take off,” wrote one person who was able to file a posting under the name Han Xiao.

“Everyone in this city knows what happened. You can delete our blog posts, but can you delete the anger in our hearts?” wrote another.